Improving Productivity Using APPC

The advanced features of APPC help speed the development of robust client/server applications and keep development costs low.

Client/server applications often prove to be especially challenging to the programmer. It is not enough to understand the details about the computer and operating system that your application uses. If you're designing client/server applications, you have to deal with computers used by both sides of the application, as well as the intervening network. For instance, implementing effective security measures is more important and more complicated, since you must ensure security throughout the network. In addition, synchronization and error reporting are often problematic in a distributed environment, because both sides of the application must coordinate their work.

One reason that APPC has become so widely used in client/server applications is that it furnishes a complete set of useful functions like security, synchronization, and error reporting. If you use other protocols, you must build these functions in every application you write. For example, if you use NetBIOS, you must design and implement a strategy for security for each application. Not only does this approach require additional work, it may result in a number of incompatible security systems in your network. By contrast, APPC includes a common set of security services that are consistent across all APPC platforms.

Similarly, most protocols do not include synchronization functions. Synchronization is required by any program that cannot continue processing data until the data sent to the partner program has been received and processed. Rather than writing your own synchronization routine, APPC provides a Confirm call that you can use to handle synchronization between two programs.